Full-time homesteading? No "job"?

Darntootin,

I don't know why everyone is shooting you down, it is a good goal, I think you are being realistic, realizing you will need some money to run your homestead and just wondering what the minimum is.

It sounds like you know what you have been making or spending annually 13,000, so I think you have answered your own question.

If you would like to work less you need to earn more or spend less or invest well. The investment part I am very leary of these days.

I think you do need cash for taxes, gasoline, car insurance/repairs and lots of other items I am not mentioning. Like Zong said it depends on what you are willing to do without to live that lifestyle.

Another good question might be what could you easily work into your schedule/time that will earn you some money. This might be small repairs you could do in the evening a few times a week at your home - don't ask me what I don't have the answer but you get the idea. Something you could do at your convenience but with a regular demand. It might be small engine repair or scissor sharpening. dvd repair.

Or just work one or two days a week out to give you the cash you need. You could also invest, if able, into equipment that would allow you to do work for others that you could be paid for, post hole auger and install fence posts for others or even learn how to install solar panels. Something that you could use yourself and make money on outside the home.

I had a friend who sold or traded extra potatoes for other items he needed .

I don't think I am shooting him down. When I got laid of 2 1/2 years ago, I realized it would be very easy to live on less than $16K annually. Just change what you THINK you need.

the part I am curious of is already noted.

Where did the $400-600K in investments come from?

Where did the $150-200K for paying off the homestead and outfitting it come from?

Silver spoon? Bought MS stock at initial offering?

No spouse/kids/family while growing up and working full time for an employer?

The 4% return on $400K will give you that $16K to live on.

Especially if the homestead is paid off along with all the vehicles.

Just a little thing to think about - what if you're injured and can no longer do the work required to keep yourself in food and heat? What would you do? I'd love to see you be able to do this, but if it were my DH - I'd ask for him to have a bit of money in the bank for all those just-in-case scenarios that might crops up. To me- it's the provident way of living and a great insurance policy that you will be able to keep living the way you want.

FarmerJ I know what you are asking, but like I said I don't have the 600,000 or I wouldn't be working at all, LOL. I'm trying to figure what an individual would need not to work outside the homestead ( given circumstances listed), I don't care if they hit the lottery, had a long lost rich uncle, worked, performed a juggling act, invested or all of the above.

From my original post;

And I guess if I get injured, too old or whatever I could sell my place and move to a more 'user friendly' location.

Nope, our home based business supports our homesteading habit! Especially with the higher costs of grain, poultry food and hay. No way we could sell anything currently off our homestead that would even make us come close to breaking even.

__________________

I have been homestead living for over fifty years. But I had a full time job for 36 of those years. Built up a retirement with insurance and then retired to homestead full time. Retired at 56 now 70. Retired comfortabley my insurance for me and the wife under three hundred a month for our part. Now I am on medicare but my wifes and my part of insurance outside of medicare over 700 a month and 178 for medicare. I know Darntootin is planning to just die and not have hospital and doctor bills. That may not be their choice. Had a problem at work passed out and sent to hospital, woke up and a total of almost 500 thousand. That would ruin most homesteaders that do not have insurance. Place is paid for total over the years for land and buildings just over 200 grand, we raise most of our food buy coffee, sugar, just the necessaties, burn wood we cut, split and stack yes we homestead and the cost is going up every day with no stop in sight. I have only known one person who never had a job, made his living on a farm raising cattle and row crops. He owned the farm ajoining mine, passed on at 74 a few years back. At 70 doubt $400,000 would keep me from being homeless if much happened. Just blew a engine in one of the tractors you do not want to know what that will cost. At 40 Darntooting can do a heck of a lot that at 60 he will begin to slow down, at 70 you are not going to be rasing a garden with a hoe. We put the vegtable and herb garden in raised beds of concrete blocks last year with irrigatrion to each bed that saved us a lot of labor. But with out a lot of equipment and a lot of land, saving everything you can for the disasters no you won't make it. My friend had several hundred acres spent his life building his farm at that scale and with a huge amount of luck mabey.

As I've gotten older, I'm come up with some fairly innovative ways to avoid a lot the harder work. And look into something called an irrevocable trust. It will keep any judgments against you from taking your place after you die. The laws are equal, not just for the rich like so many people believe. I'm the one who's planning on just dying when it's time. All my children are aware, and I have had legal papers stating the same drawn up.

eveing,
A couple of observations
your 400k is not keeping up with inflation so forget the interest
so what your really living on is the 200k which at 16k a year will get you 13 yrs
then you start to eat up the 400 k so as you use it up you lose your inflation equalizer. So my guess is your 400k would be gone in 20yrs
So at the age of so at 73 your down to you homestead which is not worth much because you havent been able to do the upkeep.
And you still need health insurance at the 8oo/moth mentioned eats it up faster.
At a million you could make it to 96 or so
I have run the numbers for a couple of years and 1 m seems to be the magic number
Steve

I'd say at 70...if you outlive 400,000 dollars you are either doing something very right or very wrong. LOL. I don't know what your expenses are, but I know what mine are and even if my tractor engine needed a rebuild, I don't see blowing through 600 grand in the next 30 years.

By contrast, my parents worked their whole lives dreaming of the day they would retire and do what you are doing but they didn't make it, they spent their lives working for the perceived security of a pension, SS and health insurance. They both died anyway, and I know that the biggest risk is waiting to live your dreams because you may not have a future and health insurance doesn't insure it. The way I see it, if you are spending your precious time working for an insurance policy that MIGHT extend your time down the road...your just trading real time ( when your healthy and able to enjoy life to the fullest) for the promise of possible extended time ( when you are old, sick, and can't even hoe a garden ). Seems like a raw deal and I've seen how my parents got burned buying into that philosophy.

I'm not working my life away unless its on my place doing what I want. Let's face it, the average life span for a man is about 76, that means HALF the guys in the US will die before 76. All we have is a finite amount of time in this life, how much isn't known. The single biggest priority should be how to best maximize your time, IMO.

yep, every old fart in the county living on a farm has a million bucks stashed. That's how we roll down here.

My cash income comes from a Navy pension and buying my land early in my Navy career. Using my Navy housing allowance to pay the mortgage on the place

SteveO good observations...2 things;

1. Not sure your assumption that my homestead will not be worth much because I 'haven't been able to do the up keep' is something upon which I would base a decision. Might be, but it's an assumption none-the-less.

2. I used the 4% 20 year bond as an example of a conservative investment. Gold can be a nice hedge against inflation, property, inflation adjusted bonds and etc. Reverse mortgages are another option at a later age.

All-in-all I think you make a strong case for inflation being the biggest obstacle. Still, if I live to be 96 I'll consider myself absurdly lucky even if I'm flat broke.

Yeah...how can it be?

I can't wait to tell them all they can't make it, unless they got a million. Old Eddie will probably split wide open from laughing. I'm gonna wait til he's got a cup full of coffee right up to his mouth before I tell it.

I wish i had come up with a lower $$ too. the gold hedge I think is gone. As for a rundown homestead it is true we bought one that had been a active family farm for 20yrs or so then old age set in. The out buildings are 40 yrs old and in need of major R and R
the house is a 70s house and needs major work. So you might say we are trying out your idea.
Based on my numbers in 30yrs your 16k will need to be closer to 40k to buy the same value
So if your 400k could get 8% you could live the dream on the 600k

I might add this is starting from scratch. if you own all your land it is most likley more than anyone today could afford the same with equipment animals outbuildings and everything else. I think we are talking about the difference of a farm to a homestead. To afford the size of acreage that I would need the 100 acres and all the toys to make it work. aAnd 3-4 years to get it operating. To make any income not even profit
So the how long will i survive senario is the numbers that I keep running\So this is for real for us

Apparently my husband likes to hill and hoe!

Smart move. Not many young soldiers/sailors have the foresight to look that far forward. It's about bling and showing off.

I've had 3 nest eggs started and life events have whipped them out.

We're not nay-sayers, folks. We're just trying to answer his question thoughtfully.

No health insurance might work for a 40-year-old single man, yes. I was speaking from my own perspective, though, as an early 30s woman with a family. DH and I are lucky, at least--we managed to get ourselves on a growing trend in our field, and we're able to teach college classes entirely from home and get benefits. Online universities are not going to go away unless our technological infrastructure dies. And if that happens, our ability to raise food is going to get us pretty far! :-)

Anyways, back on the medical care thing . . . yes, you can pay a lot less if you tell the hospital it's out of pocket, but there are also a lot of things that can happen to you that aren't life threatening, but need to be treated, and can still end up costing a #$(%$@! of a lot. That's why I'd be nervous about going without some kind of health insurance even if I were in the situation you'd described. In terms of the rest of life, I'd think $20K/year could get you pretty far if you don't have a mortgage or car payments to worry about. Though doing that in New York could be a little more dicey--property taxes up there can be AWFUL. I still can't get over the fact that DH and I paid as much in property taxes on our little $65K, 1300 sq ft. house in Rochester NY as my mother pays on her 11 acres, 3000 sq ft house here in Virginia. At least the rest of the costs of living in non-NYC New York are generally pretty low.

What I paid in MA in taxes for 6 weeks will cover the TN Taxes